Hello, and I hope you will enjoy this little Christmas story full of cookies, cuddles, and CS future family fluff! This is a gift for kitsunewingstar, and I send it to you with all my best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season and a bright New Year my new friend!

This takes place a few years after season six, sometime in the time after Henry leaves to find his own story during season seven, but instead takes place in the peaceful domesticity I hope Emma and Killian were able to enjoy back in Storybrooke as a married couple with a little one.

"Beautiful in the Broken Places"

By: TutorGirlml ( snowbellewells on Tumblr)

Snowflakes drifted lightly on the crisp winter breeze outside the Swan-Jones home in Storybrooke, Maine, making the pale, grey day look as wintry and bright as it should a scant few hours before Christmas morning. The downy flecks of feathered white sifted to Earth, gradually covering the spacious yard leading all the way to their dock and stretch of the shore, much to the delight of Hope Swan-Jones, where she stood on the seat of a kitchen chair, braced lightly by her mother's watchful hands, peering out the window toward the choppy waves with her little palms on the countertop for balance, looking out the window in awe at the bright, almost magical blanket on the ground, turning dry, wintry brown to startlingly beautiful white.

"Okay, Hopey," Emma finally urged, trying to move on with their task before her husband got home for supper. A light chuckle crept into her voice as it often did at using her daughter's self-chosen moniker. One that she could only imagine came from the little girl's having an older brother whom she idolized named Henry, and two little friends - Thomas and Ashley's second child Toby and Philip and Aurora's little girl Mary - making her think her name should end in a 'y' too. Emma would have never imagined herself, even a mere five or six years ago, using cutesy nicknames with a second child of her own, puttering away in the kitchen so the place would smell of fresh-baked cookies for her husband's return. After all the loneliness, pain and doubt of her early life, and the danger, trial and loss of her first few years as the Savior and lost princess when she and Killian's story began, what she had before her seemed almost too happy and idyllic to be real. "Ready to get down now?" she asked again. "We'd better start icing these cookies if you want some ready for Papa when he gets home and to leave out for Santa tonight."

"M'kay!" Hope chirped enthusiastically, jumping down from her perch to scamper over to the table once more, then crawling back up to sit when her mom moved the chair over into its original place, already bouncing excitedly in her seat as Emma came to sit beside her, patiently showing her how to slather the homemade mix of milk and powdered sugar white icing over cutout baked sleighs and bells, Christmas trees and stars, and gingerbread men and women. Emma iced with her for several minutes, affectionately amused at Hope's focused concentration on the task until the oven timer went off, signaling that their final batch of the cookies were finished baking.

For several blissful minutes they worked happily together in the warm, cozy kitchen, mother and daughter content with the lights from their lit tree in the next room blinking in multicolored accompaniment from the hall and providing a festive glow, Emma's iTunes playing an eclectic holiday mix as cheerful background, and the sweet scent of cookies baking indeed beginning to pervade the room and whole first floor. Even as she began to move cookies from the baking sheet to the wax paper on the counter to cool, Emma kept an eye on Hope so she wouldn't wiggle from her seat in her enthusiasm and end up falling. Once again she bit back a chuckle at the way her daughter hummed "Here Comes Santy Claus" and mumbled along her childish phrasing of the words softly in her cherubic little girl voice as she worked.

All was calm in their little space until Hope let out a dismayed gasp and 'uh oh' before the sound of cookie pieces hitting the floor alerted her mother's ears. "What is it, Baby?" Emma turned fully, ready to comfort and soothe at the sad look on her four-year-old's toddler face, tears already brimming in little eyes that were an exact blue mirror of her father's.

"I broke him, Mama," Hope cried, holding up the gingerbread man she had been painstakingly outlining in white icing and pressing Red Hots to as accents. Clearly, she had pressed one with a bit too much force and snapped the cookie arm off short.

Moving over to gently gather the little girl into a comforting hug, Emma shushed the gathering tears, knowing that between the impatience and bold reactions Hope had inherited from her, the passion of her father, and the full measure she had received of both their stubbornness, if Hope's tears got started it would be a whole different scene Killian walked into than the homey welcome she had planned. "It's alright," she soothed, holding the gingerbread man Hope had decorated up for the child's inspection. "You did a good job, kiddo. He'll still taste the same - and he's looking pretty sharp, if you ask me. One arm being a little shorter won't change how good the cookie is at all. It just makes him...unique." She added the last bit as an afterthought, but something about her words seemed to connect with Hope as her youngest appeared deep in thought for several moments. When she did pipe up again, her words hit Emma square in the chest, making her blink back quick tears of stunned surprise.

"He's like Daddy!" Hope exclaimed, taking back her cookie and seeming to hold onto it with a newly reverent care and pride. She looked to her mom for affirmation, and though Emma found her words clogged tightly in her throat, she nodded vigorously to Hope's assertion, wanting the child to know how very fitting an idea it was.

"You're right, Sweetheart," she finally managed to rasp through her swelling emotions. "Daddy's just all that much more special, isn't he? He may be missing a hand, but he can do anything he needs and then some."

Nodding vigorously, Hope went back to work, finishing off the gingerbread man with a big, white icing and red sugar heart on its chest "to make it like Papa's too" she'd explained, and then continued on to make cookie versions of Mama and Henry and Hopey as well, clearly once again pleased with her efforts.

By the time Killian blustered in the front door from his job as harbormaster, the snow flecking his dark hair and woolen collar and the chilly wind at his back, calling out to ask where his two ladies were this fine Christmas Eve, Emma and Hope were giggling and singing along to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and licking icing and sprinkles from their sticky fingers over the sink, the Christmas cookie operation nearly complete.

Her husband's tall, lean form appeared in the doorway, and for a moment Emma's breath caught as she sat Hope down and the youngster squealed in delight, running across the room to her papa and launching herself into Killian's arms. Even after nearly seven years of marriage, multiple battles, curses, separations and reunions, he still looked every bit the dashing rapscallion who had won her heart piece by grudging, gradual piece, and she loved him for it all over again. None of this life they shared would be possible if he hadn't been willing to stick around and fight for their love, even when she had yet been too guarded and uncertain to believe.

Their eyes met over Hope's head as Killian hugged his daughter close to his chest, and the knowing light in his gaze, the glow of warmth he sent toward her with an easy smile assured Emma that in this moment, once again, they understood each other.

Pulling back to grin broadly at his little girl, Killian asked jovially, "And just what have my two lovely elves been up to all day? It smells like Mrs. Claus' kitchen itself in here!"

"We made Christmas cookies!" Hope proclaimed proudly, urging her father forward to the table until she could lean over to reach the particular cookie made in his likeness, and grab it up to offer him. "See Papa? This one is like you. He has an extra big heart, even with his missing hand."

Emma could see the pronouncement caught her pirate every bit as strongly as it had her, though - to his credit - he barely seemed to miss a beat, grinning as he blinked misty eyes and planted a kiss atop his daughter's riotously curling hair. "I do see, my little lass. And that is quite the compliment. I love it."

Giggling, but obviously quite satisfied with his effusive praise, Hope held the cookie out, urging her Papa to have the first bite. As Killian oohed and aahed, smacking his lips and singing his little girl's praises, asking if she was sure she didn't have Mama use magic they were so good, Emma could only look on with a heart utterly full at how blessed she was to have a home and a family and a house full of love, more than she once could have ever dreamed.

Later that night, when Hope was at last asleep in her room upstairs, after finally being convinced she couldn't wait up for Santa or he would never come, Emma sat curled up into Killian's side on the couch in their living room, her sock feet tucked under her, his arm wrapped warmly around her and the pleasing rumble of his laughter vibrating through her from his chest. "Did you tell her that about the cookie?" Killian mused idly, when the nighttime stillness had fallen between them once again. His fingers caressed up and down her arm making Emma shiver with awareness despite the cocoon of blankets and his body heat she had snuggled herself into.

Shaking her head to his question, Emma could only smile at her husband in fond amusement, both at how he still couldn't seem to see the amazing man he was to everyone who loved him and that he would believe anyone could influence their own little pirate to believe anything other than what she decided to. "The cookie broke while she was icing it, and I was trying to keep her from getting too upset. I only assured her it would taste just as good, and that it would be unique. She came up with the rest on her own."

Killian's clear, beguiling eyes were suspiciously bright as he shook his head in disbelief. To think that his daughter found him not only whole, but extraordinary, that a child could look up to him of all people, after all he had suffered and all he had done, was still almost more than the reformed Captain Hook could fathom. "You're both much more than I deserve," he whispered against her brow, lips lingering on her skin.

Emma clutched her husband tightly, humming into his kiss. "That goes right back at you, for me," she replied fervently, praying he believed how deeply she meant every word.

Dipping his head to capture her lips fully with his own, cradling her chin in his hand, Killian swept her up, and Emma gave herself over to his ardent embrace, savoring for just one more moment the star lit on the top of their tree and the echo of the glimmering jewels of the many more in the night sky beyond before closing her eyes in bliss. The gift they had been given in this peaceful night together was a special kind of magic all its own - Christmas magic - and she wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.